Curriculum vitae

Trained in Chinese studies and History of science, my research interests centre on intellectual and material aspects of Chinese history and culture with a specialization in the history of science and technology from the 11th to the 19th century. I am especially interested in Chinese erudite interactions with, approaches to and explanations of the physical world that surrounded them. This includes the natural and the man-made, the reasonable and the strange. Concerning this last aspect my new project investigates the interstitial space where entertaining conjuring tricks, notions of magical omnipotence and fears of sorcery interacted.
I received my PhD at the Free University of Berlin in 2002 and have studied and worked at the Free University, the Technical University and the Humboldt University in Berlin, the University of Würzburg, the Chinese Normal University in Beijing, the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science and are now a research librarian and area specialist at the State Library of Berlin.

Consuming and Possessing Things on Paper – Examples from Late Imperial China's Nature Studies, in: Living the Good Life. Consumption in the Qing and Ottoman Empires of the Eighteenth Century, ed. by Suraiya Faroqhi & Elif Akcetin. Leiden: Brill (2017).